Pat Cunningham offers an unabashedly liberal perspective on national politics. A note of caution: The language gets a little salty on some of the sites to which this blog links. So, don't say you weren't warned. By the way, this blog's name is
...

Pat Cunningham offers an unabashedly liberal perspective on national politics. A note of caution: The language gets a little salty on some of the sites to which this blog links. So, don't say you weren't warned. By the way, this blog's name is inspired by the Will Rogers quote, \x34All politics is applesauce.\x34 In 41 years as a print and broadcast journalist, most of those years with the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, Pat has covered national politics under eight American presidents. He's attended 10 national political conventions, Republican and Democratic alike, and has interviewed countless prominent political players, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

It would seem at this point that a presidential candidate representing the Republican Party establishment in the 2016 election will not be acceptable to the Tea Party movement.

But conventional political wisdom suggests that Tea Party disgruntlement with the GOP nominee wouldn’t matter much. The theory is that those folks inevitably† will fall in line and support the Republican ticket.

The lines are already drawn — albeit somewhat crudely — with Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul on the tea party side and people like Govs. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Chris Christie as well as Sen. Marco Rubio representing the establishment side.

Now, someone will win that fight — that’s the good thing about campaigns, someone always wins. But, the broader issue is whether the loser — assuming it is the tea party wing — will simply fold itself into the Republican party or go its own way.

Data suggests that the answer is far from resolved. A March Washington Post-ABC News national poll showed that while tea party supporters are more Republican than Democratic, they are far from monolithic for the GOP. †Thirty eight percent of tea party supporters identified themselves as Republicans while 14 percent called themselves Democrats. The biggest chunk — 39 percent — said they were independents.